stick by for a two-hour recap special beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern. first up, though, "deadline white house" starts right now here on msnbc. hi everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. an extraordinary day on capitol hill with the fourth in a series of public hearings for the january 6th select committee. this one focused on the pressure campaign by donald trump and his allies on officials in key states. the campaign that was critical in trump's attempts to seize power for himself and one that, despite multiple warnings that his rhetoric could lead to violence, donald trump pursued anyway. as trump attorney cleta mitchell told the committee, the plot to get state legislatures to overturn election results may have been in the works even before election day and it was a multipronged efforts that included daily voicemails from the likes of rudy giuliani and jenna ellis. campaign ads and street protests

intended to intimidate lawmakers. >> if we have to, we're going to go to homes and let them know what we think about them. >> there were multiple protests. i don't remember the exact number, three at least outside either my district office or my home. you're correct. my then 15-year-old son was home by himself for the first one. all of my personal information was online. it was my personal email, my personal cell phone, my home phone number. in fact, we had to disconnect our home phone for about three days because it would ring all hours of the night, would fill up with messages. >> brian butt cutler, we're outside. >> outlining pressure from trump aides and the ex-president himself to peddle the big lie even as team trump admitted they didn't have any evidence.

>> he said we've got lots of theories, we just don't have the evidence. and i don't know if that was a gaff. maybe he didn't think through what he said. both myself and others in my group and my counsel both remembered that specifically and afterwards kind of laughed about it. >> the major focus of today's hearing, the plot by the trump campaign to arrange alternate slates of electors for donald trump. a plan that white house officials were warned could be illegal. >> did you hear the white house counsel office say that this plan to have alternate electors meet and cast votes in states he had lost was not legally sound? >> yes, sir. >> who was present for that meeting that you remember? >> it was in my office, mr. meadows, mr. giuliani and mr. guiliano's associates. >> they interviewed state

electors as well as trump campaign staff. >> we were kind of useful idiots at that point. as the road continues it was failure, failure, failure that that formulated as what do we have on the table, let's just do it. >> the hearing also featured prominently secretary of state brad ref fans berger who testified that white house chief of staff mark meadows texted or called him 18 times to set up the now infamous january 2nd, 2021 phone call between raffensperger and donald trump and his attorneys as well as gabriel sterling who debunked point by point by point the fraud claims trump made on that infamous january 2nd phone call with georgia secretary of state brad raffensperger as well as shaye moss, an elections worker in fulton counter who found herself at the center of a

completely baseless allegation. here is what he said about the threats she faced for just doing her job. >> i felt bad for my mom and horrible for picking this job and being the one who always wants to help and always there, never missing one election. i felt like it was my fault for putting my family in this situation. >> joining us now, congressman elaine luria of virginia, a member of the house select committee investigating the january 6th attack. i have a million questions, but i want to start with what you and the committee wanted us to take from today's incredibly emotional, compelling testimony from these witnesses. >> thank you. i think there were two pieces of it. one was the factual basis, what calls were made, what pressure was made and what attempts were made to create these slots of

fake' lock tore, send them to washington. the other side was the personal story, the personal toll that it took on elected officials, that it took on individuals like ms. shaye moss who works as a dedicated election official for over a decade on her, her mother, her grandmother, the personal impact of this. there's just thousands of people like ms. moss across the country who have been impacted by these lies and this pressure. >> bringing to life the reality for an election worker whose child was home alone when trump supporters, mobs of supporters descended on their homes really did i think refocus everyone on what this climate was like for election workers. but there's a through line. we asked congressman pete aguilar after the last hearing, if the president's indifference to hang mike pence was about an intended consequence or indifference to violence, and i

have the same question about showcasing all the violence put into motion by donald trump's words and deeds and lack of deeds, by never condemning the violence. what is your sense on the violence that trump ins gates as a theme in these public hearings. >> i think it's the human element of the human toll and the visceral nature of the violence. we're familiar with the violence that happened here at the capitol on january 6th. we've seen that video so many times. many of us were loosely aware leading up to it of the types of demonstrations and demonstrations got out of hand at state capitols around the country. the same man was on the senate floor wearing viking horns and the same costume, getup, carrying forth the same actions, it looked like a rehearsal. i knew this had been building and repeated around the country many times. through the work of the committee and seeing just how

much all of these pieces lined up, the pressure in the states, it culminated here in the pressure at the capitol and the pressure on mike pence that we described at the previous hearing. >> the fake electors plot doesn't get as much air time as the ellipse speech or rourj's combat by trial. it may very well represent the illegal conspiracy that directly involves donald trump, and i wonder if you can speak to your first point about laying out the facts of an illegal plot to overturn the election. speaker rusty bowers was incredibly powerful for what he said and what he didn't say. he said there was no evidence ever provided and made clear they wanted him to decertify -- he started to say overturn and then changed his word choice to decertify. there was no drama in his recitation of the facts, but the facts clearly prove that the trump campaign knew that there wasn't fraud in arizona and they

wanted a fake slate submitted anyway. >> that is clear, and his testimony was so compelling in that. he kept asking the question. he's somebody who truly is a public servant. you can tell his dedication by his words. his faith rests on that obligation that he has to the oath. he kept being told, well, we need you to do this. he kept saying, well, show me the facts, where are the list of names of people who are not citizens, people who are deceased. he kept asking over and over again and they never produced anything. eventually they get enough people to create these documents, these fake slates of electors but they don't succeed in actually getting bowers, for example, leadership in the statehouse to call a special session. he doesn't have the authority to do it. they just keep telling him and others -- this is replicated around the country -- that they have the authority to reject the

results, call sessions in state legislatures. essentially telling them figure out a way to break the law so you can send us what we want, is the result that came out of it. >> and it involved donald trump. i want to play the part of the testimony that you and i are talking about. >> to quote the former president, during the conversation he told me the election was rigged and that i won arizona, unquote. did you have such a conversation with the president? >> i did have a conversation with the president. that certainly isn't it. there were parts of it that are true, there are parts that are not. >> the part that i read you, is that false? >> anywhere, any one, any time who says i said the election was rigged, that would not be true. >> speaker bowers, did the president call you again later in december? >> he did, sir. >> did you tell the president in

that second call that you supported him, that you voted for him but that you were not going to do anything illegal for him? >> i did, sir. >> nevertheless, his lawyer john eastman called you some days later on june 4th, 2021, and he did have a very specific ask that would have required you to do just what you already told the president you wouldn't do, something that would violate your oath. is that correct? >> that's correct. i said, you're asking me to do something that's never been done in history, the history of the united states, and i'm going to put my state through that without sufficient proof, and that's going to be good enough with me? that i would put us through that, my state, that i swore to uphold both in constitution and in law? no, sir.

he said, well, my suggestion would be just do it and let the courts figure it all out. >> this testimony feels like the other half of the coin from federal judge carter, ability to assert that john eastman and donald trump likely committed felonies. this is witness testimony from a lifelong republican basically saying that the president knowingly asked him to break the law, knowing the plot was illegal. tell me the importance in terms of questions that are swirling in the arena of public opinion about trump's criminality. >> i think this was incredibly compelling and moving in the fact that we heard from the former president today through his own words the pressure he put on secretary raffensperger, the accounts with mr. powers. it really was hearing directly what the president said, who he

said it to and what kind of pressure was applied. again, like we've seen, people stand up and do the right thing, not cave to that pressure, say i'm going to follow the laws of this state and of our nation, and we're not going to throw out the electors and the popular vote of our state. we're not going to take the state slate of electors. today even more implicated in this. we have a member of congress, a senator, others who were cited by our witnesses as having participated in this plot. >> the evidence that was provided today that was perhaps most -- for those of us who follow this every day, there are a ton of questions about who donald trump was talking about when he tells acting ag rosen and deputy acting ag donohue. we got the name of one of those rs.

and that was ron johnson. tell me the significance of that anecdote and that testimony. >> well, it clearly shows that there were others who were cooperating with the president and the people close to him to carry out this plot and essentially we've got to get these slates of fake electors delivered to the former vice president acting as the president of the senate so that he will consider them and use them in this plan that we're pressuring him to carry out. so i think it's one glimpse into perhaps a bigger picture of the large number of people who were involved in trying to carry this out. so it i think was very telling that we heard that directly from a witness. >> is there any doubt in your mind that donald trump directed or participated in a conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding of congress? >> there is no doubt in my mind.

we've laid this out in multiple ways. i have read the testimony of some of these witnesses. but hearing them today, seeing speaker bowers' conviction in the way he delivered his testimony, it reinforced to me that the former president, he tried to use his office and this fake plan, scheme, all of this, many people in these swing states, to try to corrupt the election and to change the outcome of an election, something different than what the american people voted for. >> all of your -- not all, but many of your witnesses have been lifelong republicans who voted for donald trump and at least today and last week, some were the closest people to donald trump including bill barr, phil

stepien, his campaign manager. i think today is the first day we've seen cassidy hutchinson, special assistant to the president and adviseser to mark meadows. i wonder if it will include former white house counsel pat cipollone, either live or in taped testimony? >> i can't cement specifically about who is going to appear in the future, but you did hear the appeal that mr. cipollone's testimony to the committee is very important and we will see as time moves on who appears before this hearing. >> congresswoman elaine luria, i know these are intense days. we appreciate you for taking time to talk to us about it. thank you so much. >> thank you. joining our coverage, jackie alemany, betsy woodruff swan is back, national correspondent for politico, also msnbc contributor. miles taylor is here former chief of staff of the department of homeland security and our

friend jason johnson is back, professor at morgan state university, also an msnbc political contributor. i want to start are the reporters. what is new that is added to what we all now know? you first, jackie. >> nicolle, there's a few things that were new. there was the name drop of congressman andy biggs, that he called rusty bowers the morning of january 6th, i believe it was, and directly pressured him and asked him to go along with the alternate keep of electors which rusty bowers declined to do. there was also the direct link between this plot to submit the phony slate of electors and the former president via ran in mcdonald, the rnc, she testified in video played during the hearing that the president called her. she picked up the phone and he said hold on one sec, rana and put on john eastman who walked mcdaniels through the legal coup

he drafted, essentially asking for the rnc's support, though mcdaniel was quick to clarify that she viewed the rnc's role as a supporting role and not necessarily as the mechanism or operation that would be executing eastman's ideas. >> such a good thing to flag. let me play some of eastman's appeal to the georgia legislature on the elector scheme. for my control room, it's number five. >> could also do what the florida legislature was prepared to do, to adopt a slate of electors yourself. when you add in the mix of the significant statistical anomalies and sworn evidence of out right election fraud, i don't think it's just your authority to do that, but you have a duty to do that, to protect the integrity of the election here in georgia.

>> so we now know that pont examining some of the committee's evidence, a federal judge thinks john eastman more likely than nod committed felonies. hearing that was more ominous with that analysis in the public record, in the judicial record. i wonder your thoughts tieing not just eastman but trump -- the phony elector scheme wasn't a mad cap circus thing. it was a crime. it's a crime to submit flawed lent electors who don't represent the will of the folks in any states. what did you make of the repetitive nature of witness testimony proving it wasn't just rudy, mitchell. trump was involved, rudy was involved up and down the white house campaign operation, they had their hands on this conspiracy to submit fraudulent electors. >> there's so much notable about this particular wonky but

important trump campaign piece. robert setters emerging as a larger voice in this hearing was particularly notable. we heard from all sorts of people who observed the president's scheme. he presents himself as somebody who was actually involved, swept up, carried along, part of the insanity, frankly, that was playing out on the part of the president's team. he also presented this image of how it got to the point where people working for trump were essentially just throwing spaghetti noodles against the law, saying is this something we can do? let's do it, without a thought to legality, proprietor the constitution. that i thought was a really striking voice to hear on this topic. of course, also cassidy hutchinson saying the white house counsel's office itself said this scheme was not legally sound. and it wasn't something the president seemed to be doing. you had presidential campaign

lawyer distancing themselves from this scheme, trying to suggest that they basically passed the baton to rudy and didn't want to be involved. so many people who saw what was going on, new it was wrong and clearly trump's decision was rather than listening to people he trusted, people he had relationships with for years, instead he chose to listen to whoever was telling him what he wanted to hear. that's the through line that really connects all of this. it was crystallized in this hearing in a significant way. >> let me play more of this testimony. this number six. this is the pennsylvania house speaker, bryan cutler on his calls from rudy giuliani. >> another legislator, pennsylvania house speaker bryan cutler received daily voicemails from trump lawyers in the last week of november. >> mr. speaker, this is rudy giuliani and jenna ellis. we're calling you together because we'd like to discuss obviously the election -- >> hello, mr. speaker, this is

jenna ellis. i'm hear with mayor giuliani. >> hey, bryan, it's rudy. i really have something important to call to your attention that i think really changes things. >> cutler felt the outreach was unappropriate and asked his lawyers to tell giuliani to stop calling. >> i understand that you don't want to talk to me now, i just want to bring some facts to your attention and talk to you as a fellow republican. >> myles, what followed this evidence that they entered was steve bannon sending -- protest is a generous word -- in the mob to his house. the violence incited by donald trump was -- it commenced well before january 6th. >> we learned today, nicolle,

yet again, that this plot to overturn the election was premeditated. it was multifaceted and, as you noted. it was violent. on the premeditated side, the committee showed there was documentation, planning, legal rationale. this was a well-thought-through seven-stage process. on the multifaceted piece, we saw that with the fake electors, trump's efforts to find fake votes to win. we've seen that in recent weeks with the conversation about a fake authority for the vice president or the state and local officials to overturn the election i. had many, many prongs. importantly, this was also violent. this wasn't just political maneuvering, this is mafia-like tactics used as a last resort to pressure people to undertake the actions, that it was clear to white house officials, federal

officials up and including the vice president were unwilling to undertake. they sort of dispensed with the legal rhetoric, with the ex-orientations to duty. rudy said, hey, maybe you should do this because we're fellow republicans and ultimately resorted to mob-like violent intimidation. we saw it with election workers, members of congress, culminating in a violent insurrection at the capitol on january 6th. this should be especially concerning in addition to all the other laws that look like they may have been violated as part of this scheme, there needs to be a very specific review of the criminal behavior that was geared towards physical violence and threats towards some of these individuals which were extensive. >> jason, i want to play ruby freeman's testimony. i think mob comparison is good, but the reality of what these people experienced was nothing short of being terrorized. let me play that.

>> there is nowhere i feel safe, nowhere. do you know how it feels to have the president of the united states to target you, the president of the united states is supposed to represent every american, not to target one. but he targeted me, lady ruby, a small business owner, a mother, a proud american citizen whose stands up to help fulton county run an election in the middle of the pandemic. >> jason johnson. >> i don't liken gauging what i call performative blackness, what black folk are supposed to do in politics and how we're supposed to pray and sing and

dance. but the level of rage that i and people that i know had when we saw this testimony is beyond anything i've probably experienced since george floyd. that's my grandmother. that is literally the kind of work that my grandmother used to do in newark, new jersey, registering people to vote, taking seniors in buses to go here or there, getting young people registered to vote. the level of violence that the republican organization engages in against black people on a regular basis should make everything in this trial pale in comparison. this is what they do. that is what why raf fence berg -- i don't care about getting frightening calls. you know what happens to them? they go back to their office and they get security. you know what happens to people at the supreme court when they get threatened? they get paid for security. not people who have lost their name, the ability to go to the grocery store, having the

audacity to stand against the white nationalist coup that massacre reads as the republican party. what angers me so much about that testimony is i know those women are going to get additional threats because they were brave enough to get on television and talk about what happened. i also know that the party that is putting these hearings together is going to do little or nothing to keep those people safe when we face this again this fall. this was the most infuriating part of these hearings that i've ever seen. every single one of these people should be in jail. if they're not, it's an absolute ab case of responsibility by this committee, merrick garland all the way up to the white house. >> jason johnson, i'm going to need you to say more. >> the way that donald trump has sort of weaponized his own bigotry -- there's a guy i talked to in the summer of 2020

named nathan calloway in columbus ohio, who was providing medical aid during a black lives matter protest and trump put him in a tweet and people chased him around. how many different people did donald trump and his cronies have to attack, have to threaten before we recognize that the man is a terrorist and everybody who works with him is a terrorist. rudy giuliani is a terrorist. this is not political activity. this is not passion. and i don't want to hear anything about the braveness of bowman or raffensperger. those guys engage in the same voter suppression policies that led people to feel emboldened enough to feel they could threaten black people. look at how many times raffensperger worked with the georgia bureau of investigations, gone after the new georgia project. oh, my gosh, for the first time in my life i'm the subject of the same kind of violence i've been using in the state apparatus to put against black

people the last 35 years. this will be the norm, nicolle, for every other election, as long as we actually have them, going forward, if this committee and the justice department doesn't get serious about this. we watch this stuff and we're disgusted right now. i'm angry and i'm getting text messages from people. right now people in georgia are emboldened like this. they see these black women crying, and they love that kind of pain and oppression. they're doing it because they want to move us back to the america where you can treat black people like this every single time. every time you hearing have a hearing like that and nobody is in an orange jerusalem suit, they think we can do this again. next time there won't be any guardrails. we have to do something about this. complaining about it is not enough. >> jason, i played this yesterday, congressman clyburn elevated a question i've been asking all the time. we only analyzed merrick garland. what if he does or doesn't

indict donald trump? what is the precedent of investigating your current boss' predecessor who is in the other party? it seems to me the whole calculation has shifted, with all this evidence of criminality, not just crimes of passion but months' long conspiracy. the committee is presenting evidence of a conspiracy quarterbacked by trump, implemented by rudy giuliani, jumping on and off the bus like one of those open-top tour buses, that went on for many, many months. i wonder your thoughts on congressman clyburn's analysis, so what he's hearing on the ground from constituents all across the country is anger, but it appears that one donald trump is above the law. >> not only that donald trump is above the law -- this conspiracy is huge now, right?

more members of this conspiracy than herschel walker has got kids. nobody seems to be getting in trouble. what you had happening with a lot of voters, i'm saying voters in general. when you see lawlessness and see people not being held accountable, it makes you frustrated with the process. it makes you think, well, why should i bother to deal with anything. from january 6th to this, you see these people engaging in this behavior, if they're not being held accountable, why do i believe this government will protect me? why do i want to wait in a line six and a half hours to be done? this is what i hear from students, parents, friends, everybody who doesn't do this every day for a living. they look at this and say, if i engaged in a conspiracy like this to steal money from the local pta, i would be in jail. how the hell can people trying to steal the whole government not face consequences except for a tough hearing, half of which

decide they don't even want to show up. >> miles, i want to come to you on these questions of violence. normalize isn't strong enough, this is being operationalized on the right, this tactic of mob protests. i wanted to play the sound bite how horrific it is. as jason said, we should protect everybody. frankly, if we healed the sickness of our politics, there couldn't be incitements to violence. donald trump's incitements to violence are on going. the thursday of the first public hearing he described the insurrection as the greatest moment in the maga movement. not only has he not condemned any of the acts of his supporters, he continues to be enthusiastic about that. >> yeah. what did he say the day of, nicolle? we love you and remember this day forever, something along those lines.

those messages aren't lost on the millions of people following donald trump. you just mentioned bannon. i don't know if i should admit this. occasionally i listen to bannon's podcast, the war room, to understand what he is saying to these audiences. he calls the younger generation of people that follow him his assassins, not lieutenants. he calls them his assassins. they're thinking about politics as violence. that has become institutionalized in the republican party now. i was just talking the other day to a republican congressman that quit the party and left during donald trump's rise. just the other week he was giving a speech in the midwest to a couple hundred people, largely republican audience. he went in worried that maybe a fourth of the audience would say that the election was stolen, but he wanted to get a sense and asked the question how many of you think the election was stolen from donald trump? he said almost 100% of the audience raised their hands.

he asked a second question. how many of you think the january 6th insurrection was a peaceful protest? again, almost 100% raised their hands. we are not talking about rare instances of criminality. we're talking about the masses being brainwashed around this rhetoric being used for violence. what jason just mentioned about the election worker i agree was an extremely powerful scene. it's the tiniest tip of an iceberg. there are hundreds if not thousands of unreported stories across this country of political intimidation exploding in our civic lives at the moment. >> everyone is sticking around. we have much more to come here. don't go anywhere. we'll be right back. >> if the most powerful person in the world can bring the full weight of the presidency down on an ordinary citizen who is merely doing her job with a lie as big and heavy as a mountain who are among us is safe? none of us is. none of us.

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who are among us is safe?

my minions will save me. [ speaking minion ] unless they screw everything up. hello. the president's lie was and is a dangerous cancer on the body politic. if you can convince americans they cannot trust their own elections, that any time they lose it is somehow illegitimate, then what is left but violence to determine who should govern? >> we're back with jackie alemany, betsy woodruff swan,

miles taylor and jason. the conspiracy to overturn the election has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. whether or not there are criminal acts that can be proven to a jury i suppose as a society we're still dealing with that. merrick garland doesn't seem to indict anybody. but this hearing proving beyond any reasonable doubt that there was a conspiracy to so distrust any result other than a donald trump win, case closed. >> you know, i think the committee is going even beyond that. i think this gives me -- your question gives me the answer to reanswer really the first question you asked me about what stood out as the most new to me and the most shocking, and that is this story of the way trump's actions have caused this pervasive political violence at

the very foundational aspects of our democracy. my immediate response to you was about some of the specifics that do prove criminality and provide that arc of the prosecutorial narrative that we're seeing the committee really g after. more importantly and more important to the committee's mandate to actually change minds is the personal narrative they were able to communicate today. at the end of the day, yes, the stories of rusty bowers and brad raffensperger were really powerful and moving. brad raffensperger daughter-in-law who is a widow, her house getting broken into as a result of trump's threats and rusty bowers is basically dealing with death threats while his daughter was on her death bed, that is moving stuff. as jason said, at the end of the day, they do enjoy security detail. it's people like ruby freeman

and shaye moss who keep our democracy turning at the very basic level. and without people like them, it doesn't matter if there was no one to stop the illegal coup that donald trump and john eastman were trying to implement. these actions cause a chilling effect going forward. that's what you're seeing the committee try to prove and why i think it's so important that merrick garland ultimately do something with this road map that the january 6th committee is laying out, because as shaye testified, there's not one election worker she worked with who still works in the fulton county elections office. that chilling effect is really problematic going into 2024 and future elections. >> it's amazing how quickly it happened, too. it's such a good point, that

dismantling the democracy had tentacles in, of course, yes, overturning his defeat, but also in making sure there are no more ruby freemans that work in our elections, that don't administer an election in a precinct. it falls apart either way. and i wonder, betsy, as you cover -- the number of witnesses that this committee is able to showcase, not just in live testimony, but in -- i keep asking them how many hours of taped depos they have, and they say lots. there are clearly lots of hours and lots of witnesses. everyone tells the same story of donald trump's premeditated and knowingly illegal conduct in terms of submitting fake electors, in terms of getting mike pence to do something he was told was illegal, the eastman plan, and in terms of all of the asks that went out to local election officials to overturn the will of the vote in their states.

>> right. obviously the governing question shapes the decision that trump and his lawyers made in those final weeks was what can we do that would keep us in power? what steps do we have left that could possibly extend trump's presidency longer than it has been. that was kind of the end-all, be-all only question that really mattered in terms of the decisions that these people made. even to the point, as the audio you played earlier shows, of harassing state level officials, getting people like andy biggs to call state level officials on the morning of january 6th to urge them to participate in this ridiculous and unlawful plot to reverse the election outcome. the extent to which it was just spaghetti noodles against the wall is something that shows up at every turn in this hearing, particularly today, especially when you have rusty bowers talking about rudy giuliani claiming that they had theories

but not evidence. of course, we have to remember that this theory -- what the committee captured today, by far in the most powerful way possible is these conspiracy theories did real damage and put people in the real world in grave physical danger. these questions of threats against election workers are a major priority at the justice department. they set up a task force several months back focused on threats to election workers, but thus far there's not a ton of priority as far as how many people are working on the task force, how many investigations do they have open. they've brought some federal cases, but it's not a huge number and it certainly isn't something that gets the splashy attention that they're going after. it's something i've been asking the department about over the last several weeks i.'s a really important issue, how well resourced are the federal government efforts to go after the kind of people who are harassing women like shaye moss

and ruby freeman. i think one of the most obvious outstanding questions from this hearing is what happened to the people who broke into the home of shaye moss' grandmother. breaking into people's homes is illegal. you're not allowed to walk in even saying you're engaging in some nonsense citizen's arrest. it's just so important to have people running elections that they can know that their family members won't have their homes invaded because they simply do their jobs. >> miles, we talk about the moving goal post on the right and all the people that laundered donald trump along the way, all the editorial pages that laundered him along the way. michael cohen testified as to how he ran his business. people that were inside the attempted extortion of

zelenskyy. the same way, we'll withhold military aid if you don't dirty up biden. what does it say that they have permitted this, enabled this? i'm not aware of very many people going out today, certainly no one asked to be on this program to condemn the conduct described in sworn testimony today. >> nicolle, it's because they make the mistake of thinking someone like a donald trump is an aberration that they can temporarily take advantage of and it will go away. i continue to have conversations with republican congressmen who are there now who are still friends. i asked them that question, why are you going along with this? the answer is typically, look, i'm one of the not crazy guys and i've got to stay in there to steady the ship. at some point that just stops working when you realize a crazy man as taken over the ship and

deputized everybody that works on it for him. at some point you have to get off the ship. it's very clear who donald trump was from day one. all of us in the republican party knew who he was. so many people didn't want him to get the nomination, certainly didn't think he would get elected. when he did, just willingly walked along with it. i think the violence here is really the crux of all of it. my friend alex vindman says there are so many people still silent because the intimidation actually works. we've seen this before in democratic societies, political intimidation leading to political violence, god forbid leading to political assassination. we saw it in germany before the rise of hitler. we saw similar behavior happening founded on, guess what, on a big lie, on a big political lie that led to that type of violence. i worry, especially, about the republicans retaking the house and the senate in the fall and potentially the return of donald

trump because he is going to be on a vindictiveness tour, a revenge tour against his political opponents. we have seen it before in history, we need to be guarded against it now. >> up next for us, the michigan secretary of state who has faced threats of violence herself. some of it was played in today's hearing. >> stop the steal. stop the steal. you're a threat to democracy. they made the switch to t-mobile. our 5g has alaska airlines and their customers covered, from major hubs to remote destinations. with 5g coverage ready now. for the demands of today and the future, t-mobile's network powers alaska airlines as they deliver next-level care for all customers.

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and then about 45 minutes later, we started to hear the noises outside my home, and that's -- my stomach sunk, and i thought, it's me. and -- and then it's just, we don't know what's going to -- uncertainty of that was what was the fear. like, are they coming with guns? are they going to attack my house? i'm in here with my kid. i'm trying to put him to bed. and so, it was -- that was the scariest moment, just not knowing what was going to happen. >> joining us now, michigan secretary of state jocelyn benson. madam secretary, you've been one of the sort of clearest and most fact-based witnesses to the attacks on democracy, really, since the election, and i wonder how seeing this other side of your experience, of holding up democracy in your state in terms of the terror that was eked out against you and your family felt for you today. >> it was tough.

it was tough. it was tough hearing that audio again. it was seeing the video. and it was tough knowing that it's not over. that this is, you know, you could watch this hearing, saying, oh, this has happened -- this was about a past election. but it's not. this is a live battle that we're in the midst of fight, and it's that uncertainty that i talked about is still there. that anxiety still exists, and i don't know yet when we will be out of this moment, but we certainly heard the depths of which many of us have been dealing with challenges over the last few years and how far it's gone. >> you know, when i see, sitting in my chair, we cover the epidemic of gun violence in the united states of america, including mass shootings, and we cover the heinous frequency with which violence is threatened.

do you ever think it's not worth it? >> no. i don't. i signed up for this, and as you heard from shea's testimony today, the work of election officials, we're proud to do this work, and we know that all that stands in between us and losing our democracy are people. that's what we heard today, that if we give up, then those trying to dismantle democracy truly win, but if we multiply, and if we grow in our strength, then they're defeated, and that's really what it feels like in this moment. yes, it's challenging. but as we -- as the truth becomes known and as the challenges become clear, if people respond by joining us, by standing up for democracy, by signing up to be poll workers, we actually become stronger as a country, as a democracy, and i believe that is how we emerge out of this moment with a healthier, more robust democracy than before by people standing up and not walking away, not

giving up. >> one of the parts of donald trump's effort to overthrow the government he ostensibly led was the fake electors conspiracy. i don't like calling it a scheme. it seems to minimize it. but he was involved, and again, in a knowingly illegal, knowingly fraudulent effort to send alternate slates. that took place in your state. talk about, in your view, the significance of that evidence and testimony today. >> it was clearly what was a significant piece of this effort. this was, you know, the threats were real. the challenges, the false affidavits and everything else that circulated, the sham legislative hearings, all of that was real. the efforts that blocked the certification of our election results but it was all about being able to submit an alternate slate of electors, people that showed up. so and that, of course, all then

culminated in what we as a nation witnessed in our capitol on january 6th. but clearly, a key part of a nationally coordinated effort to overturn the results of a presidential election was submitting several slates of false electors from a number of battleground states like michigan, and getting then vice president pence or someone else to accept them as official. >> and in your view, do you think enough evidence exists for donald trump to be under criminal investigation for his conduct? >> yeah, i think clearly, when you have a candidate for office, not to mention a sitting president, calling a state's chief election officer, saying, find me votes that don't exist, they're -- and i know there's a criminal investigation ongoing. there has to be accountability for that, because we cannot operate as a democracy if that becomes in any way an acceptable thing for anyone to do without -- and to escape out of without getting any culpability,

because again, this is -- all of this is about not just ensuring we as a country know the truth about what we went through in 2020 but how do we avoid it from happening again, next time potentially successfully? it's by seeking a criminal culpability for those at every level who tried to nullify those millions of americans. >> jocelyn benson, thank you so much for being part of our coverage. jason johnson, to you, i give the last word. >> we're in danger. this is the most dire and most important for us to pay attention to what's happening in this democracy and i want people to understand this from today's testimony, as much as we hear about these conspiracies. imagine having to leave your home for two months. imagine having to leave your job. imagine not being able to hand out a business card, imagine not being able to go to church, the grocery store, is the movie theater, something like that because the president of the united states identifies you in a lie and the government that you pay taxes to isn't defending

you. brett kavanaugh can have 30 people show up outside his house and the senate spends a million dollars to keep him protected. but a regular working class black woman in georgia has to be on the run for two and a half months and the fbi says, work it out on your own. this is an obligation for every single american to vote out these terrorists this fall and hold any democrat who is not serious about removing these people from government accountable, not just as being feckless weaklings but at this point, you're an enabler if you're not trying to remove these people from power. >> jason, is there anything about the testimony that has been a revelation to you in terms of deepening your understanding of just how premeditated and widespread the plot was? >> actually, nicole, no. i always assumed that it was this deep. we talked about this over a year ago. the moment i heard a member of congress say, i'm pretty sure i saw somebody giving people tours throughout the building, i knew this ran deep. i knew the tentacles were

everywhere and i'm so sick and tired, when we talk to the leaders in arizona, secretary of state, these guys say, well, i'm a republican still but i'm so tired of storm troopers saying, i was only working on the death star because of the benefits. these people are not revealing anything other than the terrorists they've always been. >> jackie, betsy, miles, and jason johnson, thank you so much. when we come back, former congressman, former republican, one-time advisor to the select committee, our friend denver riggleman will be back and he will join us right after a quick break. denver riggleman will be back and he will join us right after a quick break.

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the system held but barely. and the system held because people of courage, republicans and democrats, like the witnesses you will hear today, put their oath to the country and constitution above any other consideration. they did their jobs as we must

do ours. >> hi again, everyone, it's 5:00 in new york, continuing our breaking news coverage of the stunning hearing this afternoon from the january 6th select committee that explored the depths of the ex-president and his allies, the depths they went to, to exert pressure on state government and elections officials to overturn the results in key battleground states. the picture painted by the committee fitting into the larger theme of what we've seen in each of these public hearings so far. a president who lost re-election and knew it, who was desperate to remain in power, was told his efforts to overturn the election results were not possible, were not based in fact, and were, in fact, illegal. yet, he pushed ahead with them anyway. we heard from today's witnesses, how with the president and his allies asked of state officials went against the oaths they took as public servants. here's arizona house speaker rusty bowers and georgia's secretary of state brad raffensperger. >> so for me to do that because

somebody just asked me to, it's foreign to my very being. i will not do it. i took an oath for me to take that, to do what you do, would be counter to my oath. >> i think sometimes moments require you to stand up and just take the shots. you're doing your job. that's all we did. just followed the law, followed the constitution. and at the end of the day, president trump came up short, but i had to be faithful to the constitution, and that's what i swore an oath to do. >> he detailed how trump and his team pressured those and other state workers to declare fraud when there was no fraud and when the ex-president found out these officials woulded not declare fake fraud, would not go against the will of their states' voters, he and his lawyers pushed forward to organize alternate fake electors. it's a scheme, conspiracy, that

proved ultimately unsuccessful when the former vice president certified the real, the legitimate electoral vote count on january 6th. the house select committee ended today's hearing with the real-world impact these election lies have had on these men and women, the state and local election officials, ones who were just doing their jobs. here's testimony from georgia election worker shea moss and her mom, ruby freeman. >> i just don't do nothing anymore. i don't want to go anywhere. i second guess everything that i do. it's affected my life in a major way. in every way. all because of lies. for me doing my job. same thing i've been doing forever. >> now i won't even introduce myself by my name anymore. i get nervous when i bump into

someone i know in the grocery store who says my name. i'm worried about who's listening. i get nervous when i have to give my name for food orders. i'm always concerned of who's around me. i've lost my name, and i have lost my reputation. i've lost my sense of security, all because a group of people starting with number 45 and his ally, rudy giuliani, decided to scapegoat me and my daughter, shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen. >> it's where we start the hour. joining us now is former republican congressman denver riggleman, a former advisor to the january 6th select committee. with us onset, john heilemann, host and executive producer of showtime's the circus.

also an nbc analysis affairs analyst. i know your work for the committee wasn't something you talked about, so we missed your voice in these conversations but i wonder if you can start with today's hearing and then if we could talk about what's been presented so far in your view. what stood out to you? for me, i will never forget this testimony and the lives that are destroyed by donald trump to this day from these lies. >> you know, first of all, nicole, it has been a while. it's good to be back. and as far as the witnesses stay, i would think that rusty and shaye were two of the strongest witnesses we've seen. i have looked at a lot of this. it's good john is on the panel. i just talked to him about some of this. but it seemed like there were multiple levels of intimidation and bullying that were happening at all times. if you look at military speak, nicole, it's kinetic and nonkinetic, nonkinetic, being physical threats and intimidation and then nonkinetic, using social media

to attack people, to push this narrative of stop the steal and other types of bizarre and ridiculous rumors about what happened to shaye, which is really hard to watch. and what it made me think about was my own wife and daughters in the last two years, what they have gone through, and it's just not fair. it's not right. and it's really difficult to be a counterterrorism analyst for two decades, to do what i have done, but it was the emotion of those -- i think of their testimony -- sorry about that, mike pence's fly -- but their testimony was just absolutely overwhelming. and i think that's what struck me, and i wish i had all these analyses that i wanted to talk about, but i think it's the human toll that we saw today that really bothered me on a pretty deep level. >> well, and we'll get to the analysis and i'm grateful to you for starting with the human toll because i want to ask you if you think it's fair to watch these hearings, to witness the

evidence martialed in terms of the human toll and expect criminal charges to be filed against donald trump and his inner circle. >> you know, from what i have seen, and i get to see a lot of data, i've got to see a lot of data, but i can't take the committee's thunder and i know that sometimes is frustrating but they are doing such a great job but i do believe that when you're looking at the things that are happening, even in another layer underneath, i think it's possible because what the committee doesn't have time to do is look at every single first, second, third and fourth tier individual that was pushing us out into the states. and i think when the report comes out and you see other testimony, nicole, you're going to see there was a lot more people involved in the alternate elector scheme than was even identified today and i would really encourage people to look at open source research out there, to look at what people are identifying as far as the individuals. i wish i could talk about them more. i think the committee is going to bring it up, but nicole, i think as we go forward, what i would like for you to watch for and i think everybody is coordination from right beneath the president all the way to the

individuals that were briefing state legislators in their home counties and their home states. i think that's going to be absolutely shocking when the report comes out, when you see how many people were involved with this scheme. >> when a federal judge described john eastman and donald trump as likely committing felonies, i feel like that was almost a spoiler alert for where the committee was heading. that judge made that ruling based on a filing from the january 6th committee. when you look at the evidence as it's being presented by the committee, it's very methodical, the first hearing was to show that donald trump lost the election, and donald trump knew he lost the election. the pence presentation of evidence was that donald trump knew what he was asking mike pence to do was illegal and he did it anyway. and the icing on the cake or the cherry on the sundae has been ivanka trump basically siding with bill barr, that the election was lost and she believed him and mike pence describing or based on witness testimony, being repulsed, essentially, by her father's conduct in the phone call with mike pence.

i wonder if, in your view, we're taking the right thing, evidence proved, box checked, trump lost and he knew it, trump knew what he asked mike pence to do was illegal, box checked. today, he knew that there were threats of violence against these officials, even pursued the plan anyway. the testimony of rusty bowers involves multiple phone calls from donald trump. i mean, it seems to be the committee's mission to put donald trump not just at the center of the conspiracy but on top of it. >> well, when you have that many people involved, the committee has to blend so many different things. you're right, nicole, they had to start with the timeline. i think you noticed in the first hearing, they started with the timeline, based on the video, in certain types of hearing to set up the next hearing. what they're doing is building the case and it looks like a massive command briefing that i used to do in the intelligence community where you would have the bluff, the bottom line up front, tell them what you're going to tell them, then you have the middle part of the briefing and then you tell them what you told them.

so you have these three things. tell them what you told them, tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them and that's what the committee's going and i think it's marvelous they're going through in such a methodical fashion and some people may say, it's too methodical. the testimony you're seeing linked to the facts and testimony, it's showing the human toll of how these type of ridiculous behaviors and this type of messaging and con conspiratorial grift affects individuals. once they merge that data, it's possible you could see some things come out of that that could be fireworks. >> do you think the committee will ultimately make a criminal referral to doj, denver? >> honestly, i don't think they have to. i mean, the doj, if garland comes out and says he's watching this closely, a referral's not going to matter. the doj is already on it. once you get some type of evidence exchange, at that point, the doj is on it and the committee has done its job and

my guess is we're going to see another year to a year and a half, if possible, of parsing that much data and again what the committee is trying to do is gargantuan and i think they're really succeeding. >> tell me what you mean by data. metadata, phone data? emails and texts? tell me what you mean. >> oh, gosh, nicole, you and your questions. i think -- >> we waited a long time for this. >> i tell you, john tried to get me too. but with the email, obviously, the email and the documents but there's so much metadata. people know the call detail records are out there. they know there was open source intelligence research. so there was a lot of data that the committee has that they've been able to use to base a lot of their investigation on and that data, some of that data just can't be released yet or the committee's going to release it in its due time sort of as a structural proof of what they're doing. so yeah, there's so much more data that you have seen that the committee has and i think they've been very, very good at doling out the parts they need to and keeping that other data

back, maybe for the doj but also for future hearings. and i think, oh yeah, there's metadata out there, and i think the committee has enough of it to where i think the doj will be excited about it and i think they're going to use that for future hearings. >> can you pull back the curtain on, in your view, in your analysis, how this investigation is different from the two impeachments and the mueller probe? we see for the first time some of the former assistant u.s. attorneys and u.s. attorneys who seem to be the investigative drivers of this. we see liz cheney and bennie thompson and adam schiff very deferential to the investigators. this seemed like a pure fact-finding mission. is that -- tell me your characterization or if that's right. >> you know, i know all of them and i got goosebumps when you asked me the question because so many of them, they're so nonpartisan, such heroes and it's the people behind the scenes doing that kind of work that i think americans need to embrace and you saw shaye today, right, nicole? what a hero.

can you imagine going out there, never having testified before congress before, talking about a president that attacked you? and then there is a similarity with the heroes behind the scenes on the staff that is doing this work. they have to collate just massive amounts of data, so here's what i think the difference is. and if i may be blunt, i don't think there's a congressional committee in the history of the united states that have had to parse this much data. you look at how many records they have to look through, a thousand interviews, and all of the actual supporting data behind those interviews is so massive and we have had to come up with a way to manage that data, analyze that data, and then to present that data in a way that the american public can understand it. i think it's an incredible lesson learned and i think it really is a blueprint for what investigations could look like going forward. >> you mentioned your role in counterterror, and liz cheney certainly talks about trumpism and keeping donald trump away from the oval office as though he's a threat, a threat to our

democracy. i wonder how much her views of the threat that trumpism poses to our democracy shapes both the intensity and the tempo of this investigation. >> well, there seems to be, when you look at the movement, whether they want to define it as maga or far-right or trump-specific supporters, it seems like sort of the bedrock of that is intimidation or bullying or alien nating everybody that has an alternate view and then when you do that, people have to pick a tribe and if they think that power resides in being close to trump, that's what they're going to do. i think what we have to go back to is this, and nicole, i think this might be the biggest indicator, what i'm going to say is how i would say how strong the trump messaging was before january 6th. of the 147 individuals who voted to object to the election, that is power. that's incredible power. and that really is a social media push. it's a digital push, but it's also a push of fear, fund-raising, it's sort of that whole glom of information that's put out there where the base is driving these individuals

instead of them doing what's right based on morality. that is a scary thing. and that's -- if that's politics, i didn't really want to be involved with it too much anymore, but that's what it is. you have individuals who are worried about power and if they think that power is based on the money and the gravitas that trump gives them, morals and truth be damned, let's go ahead and say whatever we can to get elected and then we'll deal with the fallout afterwards and i think that's very dangerous for american democracy. >> john, liz cheney sort of underscored that point in a comment she made at the end about who hasn't cooperated. let me play that for both of you. it's number 17. we're going to look for that. but she basically called out steve bannon and peter navarro for refusing to comply with lawful subpoenas. here it is. >> and we were reminded by speaker bowers that our constitution is indeed a divinely inspired document, and

so it's been an honor to spend time with you and with our previous witnesses here today. to date, more than 30 witnesses called before this committee have not done what you have done but have invoked their fifth amendment rights against self-incrimination. roger stone took the fifth. general michael flynn took the fifth. john eastman took the fifth. others like steve bannon and peter navarro simply refused to comply with lawful subpoenas and they have been indicted. mark meadows has hidden behind president trump's claims of executive privilege and immunity from subpoenas. we're engaged now in litigation with mr. meadows. >> liz cheney didn't lead the questioning today but she certainly punctuated it with that at the end. >> it's interesting, there was a -- this -- she's the presiding spirit over this whole thing and you can tell that as you were

talking about before, it is clear that as this committee evolved and denver, i think -- i think denver would agree with me about this. >> we invite him to jump in if he doesn't. >> one of the questions over time was, are they really going to go after trump? is that really -- there are so many things they could be doing, the historical record, what really happened, getting trump's role properly detailed and contextualized. all of those would have been incredibly valuable but the question for a lot of people was do they have the guts to go after the big kahuna and try to bring if not a criminal referral at least build the case that he broken the law and she was the one who stepped out, back last december, and started talking, citing -- >> criminal code. >> criminal code out loud. and you could tell at that moment, i think a lot of people understood that her political power being a republican on this committee, being who she is, all the things we've talked about so many times on the show, but that was a different thing because it sort of said that she was not --

she had no restraint. that she was -- that her main goal was to purge him from the republican party and that he had broken the law, which clearly thinks he has, that he should be charged. and that, i think, has been -- there's a lot of objectives in this committee and we talked a little bit about this. the hearings have been spectacular. i think in some ways, and we can talk more about this, about why today was, i think, in some ways the most powerful of them, but underneath it all, you can tell that she still has the eye of the tiger, maybe more than a couple of the democrats on the committee who seem to be a little bit more wary about trying to go for the head of the king, so to speak, and she's got no hesitation at all and you can see it every time she talks. >> and if that's right, let me add to that. what that has done is it's oriented -- these are all tied together. >> right. >> so the first one was tied to him knowingly claiming something that wasn't true, that he had lost, and you had ivanka and you had stepien and you had the data

guy who's the guy you call when you're losing, identify been in the room and they all told him he lost, even ivanka agreed that he lost and what was interesting is they seemed to be tying him to the violence as well. >> denver, that's a good question to ask you as well because it really is. i think there are -- we've all talked about how this process, the hearings, would be about storytelling. this is a political thing. this is about mass communication. this is about persuasion. there's a lot of things this committee's trying to do. you could tell this story a lot of different ways. narrative is plastic. you can make -- you can tell a compelling, dramatic, gripping story, four, five different ways. the way they decided to tell this story is in the structure of clearly definable courtroom structure. that is, that has been structured around the notion of how a lawyer would go about trying a case. getting an indictment in front of a grand jury. is that not purposeful? i mean, i know some of these decisions got made after you left the committee, but are we wrong to divine that that --

that the spirit and the hand of liz cheney and her clear objective, which is to get donald trump indicted, is not what has structured the whole way this story has been told so far by this committee? >> it's a great question, because there's a lot of attorneys on this committee, john, as you know, and me as a counterterrorism guy, pretty aggressive. but they built this from the ground up and i also think they have made facts more attractive than fantasy. dpolly day. i didn't know that was possible. how do you do that? you do that by having compelling characters in the play. you have compelling individuals who are so emotionally involved with what happened but they also, the facts back up what they went through, and i think that's what you have seen, how they built the case, is they've made this narrative where you're like, okay, yeah, we don't believe that there's meteors with aliens riding them coming down to hit us but that's what people are coming after us and they're saying facts, like, listen, there's not a meteor coming because nasa told us that

and aliens left a long time ago during the pyramids so they're actually building up the case where they're making it more attractive for facts than this fantasy of stop the steal and this sort of underlying conspiratorial base or these hysterical conspiracies that are almost apocalyptic. today was the most compelling for me and i was waiting for the alternate elector portion but shaye and rusty really knocked me off my feet today. and you know, rusty, at the beginning, i was raised in the same religion as rusty, i own a distillery now, you know how that went, but it's amazing to me to see somebody with that kind of character up there and then to see shaye, it reminded me of my wife and daughters and i do not try to get emotional ever but i couldn't believe it. i'm like, wait a second, am i getting emotional here? what's happening to me? i need a whiskey. i got to -- i can't do this.

but shaye, for the first time, i got a little bit emotional. >> yeah, i wanted to come back to that because i think we all felt it a little bit today. i know you did. i could see from the way you talked about it in the first hour. the human toll is a good word and we saw that in the testimony of some of these people who were targeted by donald trump. but i like to think about it in a different way, which is another charged phrase, which is a phrase i can't believe how many times i've invoked it on this show, which is the phrase, political violence. and what i think was so useful about this, in addition to putting a human face on it, was it started to expand our definition, our understanding of what political violence is. i have talked -- with you, many times, i said, you know, going back almost a year, more than a year, i'm worried about political violence becoming more toll rated in american public culture and whenever i say that, people say, there's not that many people brandishing guns,

blah, blah, blah, this very small thing and obviously january 6th was violent in the traditional sense but denver talked about kinetic versus nonkinetic. what you see in all of this is that political violence isn't just about getting people beat up and bloodied or shot. political violence is also about threats and it's about intimidation and it's about stuff that takes place in the real world and stuff that takes place online. not everything that takes place online is political violence. speech is not always violence. i can heck tore and criticize you but if you know anybody who's been doxed, their private information, they home phone, home address exposed in a targeted way, what happens to those people in real life. there is not much of a distinction when the perpetrator is trying to intimidate, cow, or punish someone who's not doing what they want or who's done something they don't want. there's not that much difference between online and off and what all of this is doing is making us understand just how widespread, in 2020, the efforts

at political violence were. that the capitol was really just the most vivid, the most violent, element of it, but there's these cases that have been reported, and there are many, many more of people who worked on elections who are the heroes of 2020 who were targeted, targeted with violence as i'm now explaining it, and as i think was made very clear today in the committee. and it's maybe the most long-lasting, potentially damaging thing to the system going forward, because of those people will never do that again and because all the people who might have worked on an election, been a -- been involved in electoral activity who are like, i don't need that now if i'm going to be targeted with violence by the president. i'll just stay home. that's how elections get stolen inspect future. >> and who replaces them? denver, i want to give you last word and i want to ask you the last question. donald trump was tied to the violence threatened, and i think these women testified as victims of terrorism. they've been terrorized by the intimidation online and

physical. i love your reflections on that as a term, whether you think it's fair or accurate. but the committee tied donald trump to the violence eked out and threatened against all of today's witnesses. does the committee have the evidence to tie donald trump to the violence carried out by the proud boys and the oath keepers on january 6th? >> gosh, nicole, i'd love to answer that. i can't. i want to let the committee do that. i will say this, though, with what they have, i think people will be impressed by what they're going to present over the next few hearings. i think when you're talking about domestic terrorism, what you just mentioned, this is a domestic terrorism investigation on what happened on january 6th. when you see the multiple acts of violence, which they showed today, and other states and commonwealths, that is also part of this whole plan of trying to show that this was happening in multiple levels, multiple layers, by multiple individuals. and actually, in multiple

conference rooms with individuals, like i said before, in all those layers actually trying to accomplish something, which was absolutely insane, which was trying to present alternate electors to the vice president so that eventually he would vote against the electors and then there would be chaos afterwards. so, obviously, after this is over, nicole, me and you can have a long conversation about the right-wing extremist groups. i'm very familiar with the proud boys, the oath keepers, the first amendment p praetorians a i know them all well. i think you will be very impressed. >> denver riggleman, a pleasure to have you voice back at this table and i will take you up on that. there is much more to get to this hour, including reaction from our friends, neal katyal, and pete strzok, to what we have heard today plus much more from the testimony that we have been talking about, the georgia election worker and her mom,

both faced death threats after being falsely accused of fraudulent vote counting by the twice impeached disgraced ex-president and his buddies. im ex-president and his buddies >> you said, we've got lots of theories, we just don't have the evidence, and i don't know if that was a gaffe or maybe he didn't think through what he said, but both myself and others in my group, the three in my group, and my counsel, both remember that specifically and afterwards kind of laughed about it. t specifically and afterwards kind of laughed about afterwards kind of laughed about it and find the answer that was right under their nose. or... his nose. [zoom call] ...pivot... work bye. vacation hi! book with priceline. 'cause when you save more, you can “no way!” more. no wayyyy. no waaayyy! no way! [phone ringing] hm. no way! no way!

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a staffer for wisconsin

senator ron johnson texted a staffer for vice president pence just minutes before the beginning of the joint session. this staffer stated that senator johnson wished to hand deliver to the vice president the fake electors' votes from michigan and wisconsin. the vice president's aide unambiguously instructed them not to deliver the fake votes to the vice president. >> that was one of the bombshells that landed today in today's public hearings. joining our conversation, msnbc legal analyst neal katyal, former acting solicitor general, now a law professor. pete strzok is here, former fbi counterintelligence agent. i want to ask you, neal, first, about how they have layered into other themed days, other themed buckets of evidence the complicity and participation and activism of republican elected officials. >> exactly, nicole. that's the big painting set today which is a concerted plot not just in one state but in many states to have these fake electors and to intimidate

election officials, both high and low state election officials were subject to this targeting. but to me, that's basically what the painting of all the hearings are, but today, really, i think the key thing was the committee's evidence that donald trump directly was involved in this false elector's plot. it's not just about donald trump having fantasies about winning the election when everyone in the reality-based community was telling him otherwise. that's what we've heard the last few hearings. but today, we heard that donald trump was actively manipulating the levers of government, that he called the republican national committee chair, outlining this fake electors plot. he even put on the phone with rona mcdaniel, john eastman, this lawyer who is kind of the center of the fake electors plot and so there's lots of evidence all through these hearings against other people and what you just said about ron johnson today but to me the key is donald trump because that's what

the justice department's going to be looking for as they think about, is there a criminal prosecution against this guy? and that's also what donald trump is going to be thinking about because he's evidently going to try and put the fall guy as john eastman and these other subordinates. that's a lot harder when the evidence today and presumably evidence to come will show that trump was actually at the center of this plot, not unaware of it. >> neal, is it an accurate read to say that the committee has gone out of its way to showcase and broadcast the evidence that exists in depositions and in their live witnesses that proves that on all these questions, donald trump knew. that they have -- there are students of the two impeachments and the mueller probe, and we now have testimony from everyone from ivanka trump to the data guy to the campaign manager to bill barr saying, donald trump lost and he knew it. on the eastman memo, we have multiple witnesses, the vice president's chief counsel, judge

luttig. donald trump was told the eastman memo was illegal, and he went forward anyway. and on these alternate slates of electors, the thread that runs through today is that it was illegal, no evidence was marshalled to justify fraudulent electors being selected and they pursued it with vigor anyway. >> 100%, nicole. so, i think what the committee has done is really show donald trump's criminal intent. their charge is not obviously to make a criminal case. it's to provide all the facts and that will be ultimately the justice department's determination, but what they've done is package up all this evidence in a really powerful way to show that trump knew what he -- he knew he had lost. he kept on saying he won, even though he knew otherwise. all these legal advisors and data people were telling him otherwise. he kept doing it. and he embraced this crazy fake electors thing, alternate electors thing, and alternative

electors are not, of course, a thing, just like alternative facts are not a thing, so all that happened, but today, they actually went further than that. they also said donald trump, your credibility is at issue because today, donald trump was called a liar in this hearing itself and not just by anyone but by rusty bowers, who's the republican speaker of the arizona house, and this rusty bowers guy is not someone who i think should be generally lionized. he is a die-hard republican. his modus operandi is voter suppression bills, making it harder for african american and latino voters to vote but you've got to admire the fortitude of mr. bowers today because he came before the committee, resisted threats by trump last year, presumably threats that are ongoing to this time. he also kind of resisted the general trump strategy, which is back during this election and for the four years preceding is to reward his loyalists with plum jobs and things like that. and i'm sure mr. bowers knew

that if he just did trump's bidding, he would have a wide variety of options available to him, but he did the right thing, and today, he called the fake elector plot a tragic parody. that takes guts and spine. i spent years thinking the trump administration was beyond parody. but i think i lacked the creativity to anticipate a kind of fake electors sneaking into the state capitols at night to make false certifications to our very real congress, so my hat's off to eastman and trump. they came up with something that i think no sane person would come up with. but mr. bowers today, i think, reminds us of what it is to be an american. >> pete strzok, to john heilemann's earlier point, what it means to be an american now in public life is to live with the threat of violence or death, not just for yourself but for your family, for your loved ones, for your children. so much of the testimony today was about threats of violence and the human toll, the lives forever altered and destroyed by being targeted by donald trump.

for those victims, where is the rule of law? where is the sanction for the people who have forever changed their lives, their sense of security and safety in their own homes? >> that's a great question, nicole, and i think the sad answer is, i don't know that you ever completely get it back. some of this i think for me i know you were talking about the most impactful session and for me it's still the violence at the capitol but that's coming -- my coming from a law enforcement background and thinking about what it would be like to be in that scenario. but today, we saw a very real human impact of people who had -- they weren't law enforcement officers. they weren't there defending the capitol by choice, by their profession. they were simply trying to do their job in the most fundamental way to support our democracy. working in the electoral process, counting votes, certifying votes, and yet we saw not because of any choice of theirs that by the words of the president, by the words of his personal attorney, they had the mob descend on them, and you can

see -- i mean, watching them, you could see the trauma of responding to that and it wasn't just them. it was the trauma to their families, talking about a child who had died and left behind the spouse with the two children or the impact on the mother or the grandmother and fear of going outside of the house. fear of giving out their name. and there's not something that is magically -- you can't put that harm back in the box. that's out. it's never going to escape. and i think the closest thing to vindication they're going to get is an acceptance by the american people that the person of donald trump that this sort of unacceptable terrorizing behavior has no place in our public life. and the sad part of saying that is, there's a decent, sizable chunk of the american population who hears all this and says, well, that's probably okay because trump is my guy. so the sad, short answer is, i don't know how they get that back. i don't know that it comes easily, and i'm certain it does not come quickly, if at all.

>> it was -- and i thought of something you said to me once, pete, about when your family was targeted by the president himself in tweets about, i think it was getting off the box. that you're trained to protect yourself by moving away from the most vulnerable -- the x, the most vulnerable spot, and what i thought about, ruby freeman and shaye moss, they're still on the x. they can't get off. they're afraid in their communities. they are living in fear, and i wonder what we as a broader society, for those of us on planet earth who accept as facts sworn testimony before congress from democrats and republicans, what we owe them. >> well, i think we owe them a tremendous amount. look, the analogy was being on the "x," if you find yourself under fire in an ambush, there's an "x" on the map that the guys have placed there that they're going to direct all their fire and all the different ways, shape or form, whether it's

machine gunfire, improvised explosive device and you're one and only mission, if you're in that spot, is to get off the "x," whatever you have to do. and you heard all these -- this testimony of an inability of people to get off that "x." the fbi came in and warned me ahead of january 6th, by the way, that there was danger and i needed to leave my house. but what resources do you have to leave your r house? it's one thing if you're an elected official, presumably you have a party behind you, you probably come from money or you've worked in private jobs where you have the ability to go get a hotel or go stay at a friend's vacation home somewhere. but if you're at the place where you may not have anywhere else to go, and the federal government arrives at your house and says, you're in danger and you need to leave for some time, and you end up leaving for two months, who are you staying with? how are you paying for wherever you go to? how are you paying for food? how are you protecting the house that you have left behind that presumably is targeted from violence? i think societally, it isn't enough just to recognize and

say, well, we see your sacrifice, and gosh, we see your pain and your trauma. there has to be some way to -- and i don't know whether it's based on the statements of rudy giuliani that were false, perhaps there's some civil remedy for them to go after him. i don't know that. but it strikes me as insufficient and inappropriate for us to simply watch that testimony today and say, gosh, that really looks terrible. it really looks like they're still suffering trauma. hang in there. you're a great american. that's not enough. and so we need to do more. >> i completely agree with you. and it's why i want to sort of dwell on this topic a little bit more. we're going to sneak in a quick break but we're going to hear some of these threats of violence we're talking about. in some cases, they were very graphic ones against election workers and state officials who stood against the ex-president's plot to overturn the election. stood against the ex-president's stood against the ex-president's plot to overturn the election. back then we could barely afford a hostel. i'm glad we invested for the long term with vanguard.

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horrors of threats faced by election workers in the united states of america in the aftermath of the 2020 election are already a matter of public record, but it is one thing to read about them, to see them periodically and another thing entirely to see them described by the people who endured them. here are today's witnesses in their own words about the threats they faced. >> up until even recently, it is the new pattern or a pattern in our lives to worry what will happen on saturdays, because we

have various groups come by and they have had video panel trucks with videos of me, proclaiming me to be a pedophile and a pervert and a corrupt politician. and blaring loud speakers in my neighborhood. >> wishing death upon me. telling me that, you know, i'm -- i'll be in jail with my mother and saying things like, be glad it's 2020 and not 1920. >> after the election, my email, my cell phone was doxed and so i was getting texts all over the country and then eventually my wife started getting the text and hers typically came in as sexualized texts which were disgusting and then some people broke into my daughter many

law's home. she has two kids so we're very concerned about her safety also. >> we had a daughter who was gravely ill, who was upset by what was happening outside. >> there is nowhere i feel safe. nowhere. do you know how it feels to have the president of the united states to target you? >> i received a call from my grandmother, just, freaking me out. saying that there were people at her home, and they, you know, they knocked on the door, and of course she opened it, and seeing who was there, who it was, and they just started pushing their way through, claiming that they were coming in to make a citizen's arrest. they needed to find me and my

mom. they knew we were there. and i told her to close the door, don't open the door for anyone. and you know, she's a 70-something -- i won't say ---year-old woman and she doesn't like having restrictions. she wants to answer the door. she likes to get her steps in, walking around the neighborhood. and i had to tell her, like, you can't do that. you have to be safe. you know, she would tell me that at night, people would just continuously send pizzas over and over to her home, you know, and they was expecting her to pay for these large amounts of pizzas, and she went through a lot that she didn't have to. and once again, it made me just feel so horrible. >> none of that just happened. it happened because of donald trump.

and so far, there has been no accountability. >> none. >> zero. >> none. and like so many things that we've seen in this entire ordeal, ranging from donald trump's behavior with brad raffensperger to other things that we've now talked about at the capitol, the question that keeps coming back to me because although i sometimes pretend to be a lawyer on tv, i'm not, unlike my friend neal, so there are so many times i find myself thinking, if this isn't illegal, it should be. >> what is? >> right. if there's some way in which this behavior, by anyone, let alone the president of the united states, is not already covered by statute, then we got to change the statutes. that's one of the action items coming out of these hearings and you can see that in terms of some of these issues related to political violence, intimidation, threats and other things online and off. again, i think it should be intolerable for any public figure to be behaving this way, treating people this way, let alone the president of the united states and if that's not illegal already, another set of indictments that you could bring against donald trump, then we should fix the laws because that's all stuff that should not

be okay. >> i mean, neal, as john said, you are a lawyer. it seemed to me that donald trump was more -- we talk about him as the match. donald trump was a participant in the harassment campaigns against all these individuals. he stoked them. ent campaigns against al all these individuals. hel these individu stokedals. he s toked themthem, disseminat them, tweeted them, amplified them, and then he made sure they didn't die down. he kept them on the front burner.fr does he have any criminal exposure for all that behavior? >> he sure, does. lordy, john, there are statutes. a lot of them. defamation is one, incitement is another. so i don't think ween need to he any fix of the statutes. there are both civil statutes that allow people like those who testified today topl sue trump, and there's also criminal statutes both at the federal and state level. those obviously require the concurrence of a prosecutor to come in and file criminal le charges.

and ordinarily, the problem witn these is a first amendment defense that someone will say, i was just exercising my speech rights. i can't be accused of anything here. but the interesting thing is, donald trump is a guy who's actually trying to sue other people forgu defamation, and he wants to get rid a that very first amendment defense, like the defenset about malice for publicou figures and the like. and of course, like, these election workers, they're not public figures they're relatively weak people being targeted by the most powerful person in the nation, indeed, in the world. i absolutely think any of these folk who is testify today has a great case against donald trump, and what's exhibit "a"? donald trump's own words about how the first amendment doesn't excuse any of this nonsense behavior. >> nyneal, what are we to feel the fourth day of what felt like mountain of evidence of donald trump's role, not someone swept

up in a conspiracy to overturn the results of an election, but as someone directing it?as >> i think what we feel is that the criminal case against donald trump, moving from the civil side we were talking about before, to the criminal case -- was he orchestrating a conspiracy to defraud the united states? was he fomenting a plot to interfere with the counting of the votes on january 6th? he was at thevo center of this thing. he was not a spoke or some peripheral figure. he's the guy who's actually connecting the players together, connecting eastman to the head of the rnc and the like, so he's involved at every turn.in so i think it makes merrick garland's job, in a way, a lot easier, because the case is much, much simpler than i think people thought before. here's where i think the committee --re i think the committee's done a great job, but there's two areas i think the committee has fallen down on the job. one, we got to the end of

hearing with liz cheney exhorting pat cipollone to come and testify. he's evidently been telling media figures i'm worried about privilegefi be the precedent th would set for future presidents and the like if i go and testify, which makes no sense because he's evidently been cooperating already with the committee for a while, so whatever harm there is to privilege has already been done. but more importantly, you know, the privilege has always been the subordinate to other issues, and if there's an overriing need for the information you can pierce privilege. and if they allow cipollone to get away with not even trying to subpoenah him with this bogus claim of privilege, what future lawyer,vi what future governmen official will noter be able to subpoenaed in the future? nobody will be able to be subpoenaed for anything. if you don't do it for january 6th you're literally never going to do it again for the history of the united states. that's one problem. i think they should subpoena

him. the other is, it's pro shocking me this entire hearing's happened, set after hearings happened, vice president mike pence is at the centerpiece of all the discussions at the hearings, but he is nowhere -- and you know, i think the committee has to call him on itl i think the committee's got to subpoena him. i understand the vice president's very scare offendi donald trump, very scared of the republican party's reaction, but, you icknow, get some spine jelly fish. tell the american people what happened on this, the most important day in recent history. >> pete struck, i want to extend that. that was really the question i wanted to ask the both of you is what more you want to see from the committee, or in what ways the committee -- neal framed it in terms of how the committee's fallen down, but gave them the ability to fix it by saying there's two things he wants to see done. do you have things in your mind, you're hopeful the committee will take another step that's st important, or they've not quite buttoned things downth the way u want to see?

>> that's a great question. there are three things i'm looking for. one is the actions of the doj. i hope it's not just doj. i think there was a component, part of this plan, efforts to use law enforcement, whether that's the fbi, dhs, to engage in somedh of the activity aroun stealing the election, and i'm curious to see what beyond just the attempt to put ian clark, the attorney general, what those plans lookrn like on the ground whether they intend to use dhs or fbi or d.o.d. to seize voting machines. the second thing is certainly to look at -- denver hint at this earlieren in the hour, some indication all these militia groups. most people have heard of the oathst keepers and proud boys, t it's p interesting to hear him mention groups like the first amendment pretorium. theyam provided security to mik flynn and other folks. rusty bowers mentioned seeing a guy with three bars and a gun.

that's the 3 percenters which is another group we haven't heard a lot about. i think we're going to see more information there about people who are involved in the physical violence aspect of either on the capitol or enforcing violence and extending violence outside the capitol. and then the last thing -- i absolutely agree with neal. this is a lot more complex than i anticipated. my sense going in was trump and his attorneys were going around. you had the lawsuits. it appeared to be helter-skelter amateur hour. but it's clear there were a lot of moving pieces. the way the committee is tell it is i think the only way they can tell it. if you try to do it chronologically, there are too many actors and people are going to get confused. doing it the way they're doing it, they take all these different component pieces, and again, i agree with neal, the place that comes together, the place where all the narratives come in the road and meet at one

spot, that spot is donald trump, and that's where i think the committee ends up and they end upth talking for the last part their hearing presentations. >> it's so interesting, and to hear you say it like that, like an investigator, someone has to know everything, right? because they're putting together these presentations and public hearings and, someone has to in their head say, wait, i remember in the barr deppo, or i remember in the ivanka depo and tieing it all together, but it does all come backbu to donald trump. thank you so much for spending some time with us today. quick break. we'll be right back. yo time wit. quick break. we'll be right back. ng on the m♪ ♪ some ♪ ♪ may say ♪ ♪ i'm wish days away ♪ ♪ no way ♪ ♪ walking on the moon ♪

thank you so much for being with us. i will be back in two short hours with all my colleagues, the entire msnbc primetime lineup for our recap. right now, though, our coverage continues on "the beat" with ari melber, who will also be back in two hours. >> i'll see you soon. thank you so much. welcome to "the beat." i am ari melber. we have a special show, including a report we have been working on, that